Gaudy, variegated jawbreaker-style mushroom anemone

Off-the-hook mushroom alert! This incredible Discosoma mushroom anemone just popped up from Pacific East Aquaculture. Dr. Mac was in Indonesia hand picking corals and he selected this beautiful mushroom anemone. The carefully cropped photo shows just one, and probably the nicest polyp on the rock, but clearly it isn’t one of a kind, but at least three of a kind or more.

We love to promote the beauty of marine life and the fascination thereof, so we find it kind of tacky that the only thing mentioned about this polyp is “let the bidding begin”. But hey, flights to Indonesia aren’t cheap and that’s how you score the best of the best marinelife and bring it to the aquarium hobby.

This latest find just goes to show how every group of polyp animals we broadly call corals have their superstars and the genetics to completely knock our socks off. Hopefully this incredibly colored and patterned mushroom anemone will join the ranks of Jawbreakers and Eclectus mushroom and go into intense propagation for the whole hobby to enjoy down the road.

Jake Adams has been an avid marine aquarist since the mid 90s and has worked in the retail side of the marine aquarium trade for more than ten years. He has a bachelor’s degree in Marine Science and has been the managing editor of ReefBuilders.com since 2008. Jake is interested in every facet of the marine aquarium hobby from the concepts to the technology, rare fish to exotic corals, and his interests are well documented through a very prolific career of speaking to reef clubs and marine aquarium events, and writing articles for aquarium publications across the globe. His primary interest is in corals which Jake pursues in the aquarium hobby as well as diving the coral reefs of the world.